summary of NPR talk on Google X guy and how his teams accept failure as a counter-balance to their wild moon-shot optimism

"enthusiastic scepticism is not the enemy of boundless optimism. it's optimism's perfect partner. it unlocks the potential in every idea."

Democrats went for a soundbite that still somehow over-estimated the intelligence of the American public, while still missing the entire meal

"Trump commingled the personal and the national not just on trade questions but across the whole field of national security. I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations.

These and innumerable other similar conversations with Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency. Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different."

it's almost like having a racist tyrant-wannabe in power matters

"According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do. The National Security Council’s top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China."

also someone with a "reflex to try to talk his way out of anything, even a public-health crisis"

"The NSC biosecurity team functioned exactly as it was supposed to. It was the chair behind the Resolute desk that was empty."

policy of the world's superpower is based in narcissism and weakness

"Most important of all, will Trump’s current China pose last beyond election day? The Trump presidency is not grounded in philosophy, grand strategy or policy. It is grounded in Trump. That is something to think about for those, especially China realists, who believe they know what he will do in a second term."

"I am not sad that Black Americans are rebelling; this was not only inevitable but eminently desirable. Without this magnificent ferment among Negroes, the old evasions and procrastinations would have continued indefinitely... radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced... Today's dissenters tell the complacent majority that the time has come when further evasion of social responsibility in a turbulent world will court disaster and death. America has not changed because so many don't think it need change." - Martin Luther King Jr., "A Testament of Hope," 1969

has the silent majority only grown and become more complacent since?

Regardless of which version of events is followed, it seems fair to say that some level of intoxication was involved in the development of the maze algorithm.

"The basic maze generating routine had been partially written by a stoner who had left. I contacted him to try and understand what the maze generating algorithm did. He told me it came upon him when he was drunk and whacked out of his brain, he coded it up in assembly overnight before he passed out, but now could not for the life of him remember how the algorithm worked."

Sidley also observed that the maze code was uncommented, and when asked about the 32-byte table said ‘It was a mystery to me too, I couldn’t unscramble it. I just used it to generate the new row at the bottom of the screen.’

It was only when these attempts at drawing attention to systemic problems failed that demonstrators rose up in violence, including in modern-day Baltimore and Charlotte.

"I was one of the ones who started the peaceful protests … the first seven days [after Gray's death], when it was fine and dandy," William Stewart, a West Baltimore resident who didn't participate in the riots, told Jenée Desmond-Harris for Vox. "I walked about 101 miles in peace. But if you protest peacefully, they don't give a shit."

"This is one of the greatest ironies. People would say that this kind of level of upheaval in the streets and this kind of chaos in the streets is counterproductive," Thompson said. "The fact of the matter is that it was after every major city in the urban north exploded in the 1960s that we get the first massive probe into what was going on — known as the Kerner Commission."

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News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

there is no form of black protest that white supremacy will sanction

It is easy to dismiss the rock thrower; Attucks himself was accused of throwing sticks. But those who rebuke violent responses to injustice should ask themselves: How should the oppressed respond to their oppressors? How should the nation respond to political dissent? How do the oppressed procure power?

As Netflix and Disney spend billions on new shows, we can’t stop watching TV. But is it any good?

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Many in the western business community are still hoping they can keep their heads down and continue to benefit from Hong Kong’s unique position in the world.

They are wrong — from a moral as well as a practical perspective.

Hong Kong is now the main battleground in an escalating cold war between China and what is left of the US-led liberal world order. Beijing’s decision to ignore the damage to its global reputation and defy its international treaty obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong shows the Chinese Communist party already believes this.

Great recipe for Chicken sprite adobo. Filipino dish

While Sweden has avoided the worst outbreaks in Italy, Spain and Britain, it has also seen an extraordinary increase in deaths, mortality data shows.

Today we’re announcing that Facebook AI has built and open-sourced BlenderBot, the largest-ever open-domain chatbot. It outperforms others in terms of...